abandonware games sorted by popularity

Wizard of Wor 98 revisits the classic maze-shooter concept and gives it a late-1990s computer makeover. Players move through labyrinthine arenas while hunting monsters, dodging att...

If you’ve ever dreamed of being a cop who drifts around corners at 90 mph in a convertible, Cisco Heat is your kind of chaos. This arcade racer puts you in the shoes of a law...

Desperados is a tactical western adventure that takes the familiar cowboy setting and replaces the usual run-and-gun chaos with careful planning. You control a small group of chara...

MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries is a standalone expansion to MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat, released in 1996 by Activision. Part of the larger BattleTech universe, the game puts pl...

The Tomb of Drewan is an early adventure that sends the player into an ancient tomb packed with mystery, danger, and the sort of puzzles that make you question why anyone thought e...

Before BurgerTime stole the fast-food spotlight, there was Burger Blaster—a game where you build burgers by shooting them. With a gun. Because why not? This early arcade-styl...

Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch is a 1992 adventure game inspired by Larry Niven's famous Ringworld universe. Players explore a richly imagined science-fiction setting, interac...

You thought running a government was hard? Try doing it with a smug civil servant and a budget crisis every five minutes. In Yes, Prime Minister, you play as Jim Hacker, the PM him...

Released in 1988 for DOS, Feud is a wonderfully weird strategy game about two rival wizards who absolutely refuse to get along. Each turn, you gather resources, cast spells, and tr...

In Strahd’s Possession, you’re tossed into the mists of Barovia, where Count Strahd—smooth, sinister, and eternally well-groomed—looms over everything. The ...

Myth is a dark fantasy adventure that draws heavily on ancient legends, presenting a world filled with heroes, monsters, and dangerous quests. Players explore mysterious environmen...

Robo Rumble is a 1998 Windows action game built around battles between heavily armed robots in futuristic arenas. Players control a combat machine, maneuver around the battlefield,...

Omega (1989, DOS) is what happens when someone hands you a robot, a wrench, and a thick manual, then says, “Good luck out there.” Instead of piloting a mech, you actual...

Welcome to Los Angeles, where crime runs rampant and your job is to bring the chaos down with nothing but surveillance skills and a stern attitude. L.A. Crackdown puts you in the s...

Despite its title, Endless Horror doesn’t go for cheap jump scares—it prefers the slow, creeping kind of dread that seeps in while you stare at murky DOS graphics and w...

Snoopy and Peanuts is a 1990 DOS game inspired by Charles M. Schulz's beloved comic-strip characters, bringing Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and friends into a lighthearted computer adven...

MegaRace 2 builds on the original's futuristic racing formula while pushing the presentation even further. The game offers a collection of wild tracks, armed vehicles, aggressive o...

Encounter drops you into a minimalist sci-fi scenario and wastes no time explaining itself. You’re alone, surrounded by enemies, and expected to survive using quick reflexes ...

Secret of the Silver Blades is a 1990 computer role-playing game from the Forgotten Realms series, continuing the tradition of party-based adventures built around the Advanced Dung...

Space Quest 1: Roger Wilco in the Sarien Encounter is the adventure that introduced Roger Wilco, a janitor who somehow manages to become one of science fiction gaming's most lovabl...

Step into the Korean War with Conflict: Korea, where you command UN forces and discover that even in strategy games, North Korea is a problem. It follows the same system as the res...

Imagine X-COM but with fewer excuses to blame the developers when you miss a 95% chance shot—because in UFO 2000 (2004), the chaos was entirely player-driven. A free, open-so...

IBM Fixed Disk Organizer is exactly the sort of utilitarian software that reveals how seriously early PC users had to take their storage. Released in 1983, it was designed to help ...

Aka Starglider 2 with an attitude, Revenge of Defender (or Defender of the Crown’s evil twin in name only) is a 3D space shooter where your main enemy is not the aliens&mdash...

Emperor of the Fading Suns is a grand strategy game that looks at you and assumes you’ve cleared your schedule. Politics, religion, warfare, economics—it’s all he...

Contra: Locked and Loaded is like caffeine in video game form—fast, explosive, and just a little dangerous for your health. You’re running, you’re gunning, and yo...

Super Huey UH-IX is an early helicopter simulation that places you in the cockpit and asks you to master the wonderfully awkward business of keeping a rotorcraft airborne. The game...

Educational software rarely tries to reinvent entertainment, but Learn The Alphabet, released in 1993, manages to teach young players while keeping the experience cheerful and appr...

WaxWorks (1992, DOS/Mac) is a horror game that doesn’t just want to scare you—it wants to traumatize you a little. Set in cursed wax museum exhibits, each scenario drop...

Acrobat Reader was the first of a family of application software developed by Adobe Inc. to view, create, manipulate, print and manage Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Acrobat...